Samsung Galaxy i7500 Updater by drakaz : Easy way to update your phone

having moved on from my bad experiences of the Samsung i7500 Galaxy (its a good phone, just that Samsung seemed to 'forget' it ever existed so it was stuck on 1.6) to a Google Nexus One.

But I still keep an eye on things to see what the community is doing, as many still have the phone and cant afford to change.
Ive got one in my cupboard doing nothing too!

So I was pleasantly surprised to find some great new work by drakaz, making it so easy to root and update to custom ROMS.

There are two roms GOASP and Galaxo which you can choose from. Reckon I'll dust off the i7500 and get it flashed ASAP as a backup.
In fact if this had been available a few months ago I may well have stuck with the Galaxy :-)


Easy Root (required for next step)


Galaxy Updater

will update as to how I get

Samsung i7500 HTC Hero clock/weather widget / battery life again! / first ever reboot

HTC Hero look alike home screen clock and weather

any self respecting android user loves the HTC Hero SenseUI interface (a wrapper on Android 1.5)
now the Hero is laggy (although that may be fixed in a new firmware update) and if youre like me youve chosen the Samsung i7500 which has plain ol 1.5.
There are 2 options

1 : flash a custom HERO look a like rom onto the galaxy (i7500), there are some available.
Steps can be found on the web

or

2: install some cool widgets or home replacements that mimic the effect.

I want to keep a quick ui so I chose the widget option for now.
The key thing is that you have to be careful , as the wrong widget and your battery life will be shot........

I narrowed it down to
Beautiful Widgets
or
Weather Widget Donate
(which also allows you to get the forecast widget)

I chose the later after seeing a few places state some battery drain for the first one.
Weather Widget Donate works great , I have no lag issues , no increased battery drain and it looks slick.....highly recommended

(although I see that the Beautiful Widgets has just been updated completely and looks just as good, in fact includes 24hr support and hi/lo temp display), very tempting if I hadnt bought already lol

heres its installed, note that its a combined clock and weather skin.

From Johns Car Blog

(note how I also installed the Battery Status - free by them too. Both have free downloadable skins to allow you to customise the battery visuals, check out Lock 2.0 skin gallery
Dont be confused, the site details many things.

You can get skins for
1. Lock screen (I dont use this)
2. Weather + Clock combined widget
3. Battery widget
You use it to find the one you want , then from the phone you can download them now you have a name to use...
Im using the glass one just now , so the background shows through :-)
You can get to the settings by tapping the widget, it now shows the current and 3 day forecast.
Then press the menu button and 'settings' , there are 2 'skin' options , one for weather , one for battery.
Enjoy
)

Samsung i7500 galaxy battery life update
Now runs for one full day with most toys enabled :-) 3G/Data sync but not GPS. down to 35% by 11pm
Reckon if i turned 3g and sync off I could now get 2 days out of it.

I see the battery has an extended capacity cousin , so it wont be long before someone releases an extended battery and rear cover to improve the life , woohoo


First ever screen lockup and reboot on i7500!
Phones never been off since I got it, but today I tried to unlock it and it went unresponsive on the draw pattern to unlock screen eek!
then the android title came up and it rebooted , then I found the data connection was dead!
In the end I had to switch it on and off again and enter my sim pin code.
(first reboot seemed to not allow me to log into my pin lock)

samsung i7500 galaxy new user tips part 2

Unable to send text messages on O2
couldnt send any text messages , could receive them and make calls ....
would always get a 'message not sent' icon in notification bar
turns out the message centre number was wrong and had '61500' appended to the correct number.
edited it to remove the extra numbers and voila its working

Making sure the alarm function works!
Ive already mentioned TasKiller as the ultimate app to save battery life by killing background apps.
However I was a bit zealous last night , set my 6.20 am alarm then killed the process......
The alarm icon was present so i assumed it was gonna be ok........
I was however wrong , it didnt go off at all FFS

so dont kill Alarm process if you want to get up for work (seems obvious doesnt it !)


battery life seems better today after the 4th full charge.
funnily enough its takes AGES to charge from 99% to full.
its now 17 hrs from 100% and its now at 60% , much better.

still loving it :-)

N85 8GB is dead , long live the Samsung I7500 Galaxy

Well after several months of waiting the Samsung I7500 (Galaxy) is now here in the UK.
After 3 phonecalls yesterday , I finally got someone who knew about the phone and was prepared to take my upgrade request...
the box was delivered today , so after a charge , it was time for a ply

After a long line of nokias , its time for android.
My last phone was the N95 8GB



Initial impressions are very favourable , slick quick interface with my first touchscreen.
The screen (AMOLED) is a joy to behold. Now to start downloading apps.
i have already turned off autosyncing to save battery life!

I'll let you all know how it goes........